Yunchtime

Tag: comics

The MICE invasion of Cambridge was a swarming crowd of anarchistic fun. Hundreds of comix-crazed attendees jammed the halls of Leslie University, chatting with 200 comic artists and publishers. Tables of eye candy stretched through the second floor of University Hall, connecting with additional jam-packed side rooms named after comix greats, such as the Crumb Room, Doucet Hall, and the Bechdel Room.
You gotta love the idea of independent comix artists actually being recognized in the mundane society for their pure “genius” — proven by Alison Bechdel’s Westinghouse Genius Award in 2014!
Here is a gang of fervent, possibly feverish, and yes, well, let’s face it, mostly starving artists who are so adamant, so tenacious, and so in-your-face diversified, that their official genius is the inventor of the gender-bias principle known as the Bechdel Test.
Yo, MICE artists, kudos to the whole lot of you! You are giant mice among scampering human conformists, in my book.

Repost of Dark Knight Review (originally published July 2008)
If you haven’t yet seen the film, Dark Knight, please do that first before reading this post, because you will definitely spoil the “tension” of the plot, assuming there is any. For some reason this film is a runaway hit, with critics pissing all over themselves to outpraise each other. From my perspective, despite some excellent cinematography and a stellar performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, it is really just another Batman movie, but with a troubling dichotomy at its core that is getting scant attention. There are clearly two very conflicted subtexts in the film, one centered on Batman and the other on the Joker. Batman’s supposed internal conflict we are all familiar with — having to take the law into his own hands in order to fight evil — dating back to his first appearance in Detective Comics #37; on the other hand, unlike the ridiculous slapstick Joker that Burton and Nicholson gave us, Ledger pushes his exploration of the Joker’s mercurial psychology into whole new realms of uncharted territory.

When the extremely homo-phobic and generally insane self-described Christians led by Fred Phelps and the Westboro Church decided to protest the “idolotry“ and “skimpily clad whores“ of San Diego Comic Con, there was bound to be an interesting response. You have to wonder why a few brain dead “true believers” (read: provocateurs) go up against the teaming throng of tens of thousands of comic book nerds…when you know the reaction is going to be an absolute trash fest. But, thank heavens, the comic fans didn’t fail!
Bender, of Futurama fame, had his moment in the sun, holding a KILL ALL HUMANS sign and shouting: “Westboro Church, bite my shiny metal ass!” Wish I had been there for that one!
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While randomly grazing the sweet grass of the intertubes, and reading about such things as the Comic Salon Erlangen and looking at Andy Konky Kru’s photos of the 2006 Salon, I stumbled across Skip Williamson’s blog on the history of Underground Comics. [Sadly the blog is defunct, after 2015].
Not only did this remind me of my first major comic book convention (at the Playboy Towers in Chicago) where I met Skip Williamson, but also of Skip’s terrific “Class War Comix,” published about five years later in Snappy Sammy Smoot (1979). In addition to the classic newstand headline: Agnew Breaks Wind, Thousands Die! this comic featured a paranoid schizophrenic Richard Nixon being replaced as President by an even more freaked out long-haired capitalist, Amphetamine Arnie.